COURSE DESCRIPTION AND OUTLINE

Policy Analysis Research Seminar Dr. Lance deHaven-Smith

Spring Semester, 2001 Office: Inst of Govt

Wednesdays, 2-4:45 p.m. Office Phone: 487-1870

Bellamy 122 Home Phone: 668-2036

e-mail: ldsmith@garent.acns.fsu.edu

Web Page:

garnet.acns.fsu.edu/~ldsmith

Required Texts

Richard Nathan, Social Sciences in Government

Joseph Pechman and Micahel Timpane, Work Incentives and Income Guarantees: The New Jersey Negative Income Tax Experiment

John Berrueta-Clement, Changed Lives

Various policy research reports available on line (see “Course Outline and Readings” below)

Suggested Supplementary Reading

Lance deHaven-Smith, Philosophical Critiques of Policy Analysis

Gary LaFree, Losing Legitimacy: Street Crime and the Decline of Social Institutions in America

David Musto, The American Disease: Origins of Narcotic Control

Henry Vandenburgh, Feeding Frenzy: Organizational Deviance in the Texas Psychiatric Hospital Industry

Gotz Aly, Final Solution: Nazi Population Policy and the Murder of European Jews

C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow

Michel Foucault, The Eye of Power

Jurgen Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests

Charles Murray, Losing Ground and Herrnstein and Murray, The Bell Curve

William Julius Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged

Aaron Wildavsky, Implementation

Aaron Wildavsky, Speaking Truth to Power

Daniel Yankolovich. Coming to Public Judgement

The Purpose of the Course

The word “seminar” shares its root with such words as seminal and insemination, which have to do with important beginnings. This course is a seminar in this original sense of the term; it is intended to provide a starting point for a lifetime of inquiry into the methods, findings, and uses of research on the effects of public policy. You will not learn any single analytic technique in great depth. Rather, you will be exposed to the full breadth of the field, and to some of the most important studies and findings, so that you can choose wisely when deciding what techniques to focus on in subsequent courses or research.

You should leave this course with a foundation in at least five aspects of policy analysis. One is the field’s origins. We shall see that policy analysis is a very new topic of study–no more than about 50 years old. It is unlike other fields in a decisive respect. Most subject matters have been delineated because of their connection to questions of obvious interest to human beings, questions about the origins of the universe, the course of history, the nature of thought and language, and so on. Typically, these traditional scientific fields are initiated by one or a few path-breaking scholars. We see Darwin’s imprint on biology, Adam Smith’s on economics, Freud on psychoanalysis, Wilson on public administration, etc. But policy analysis was initiated independent of the world of scholarship, in the exigencies of the Great Depression and World War II. These origins are of crucial importance in understanding the field, because they mean that it develops largely in response to the needs of government in contradistinction to the interests of science, truth, and the growth of knowledge. This is why much theorizing in policy analysis is devoted to trying to understand how to free the field from destructive governmental control while at the same time maintaining relevancy and funding. You should learn how to see, and to deal with, the intrusion of power into your search for the truth.

A second foundation you should gain from the course has to do with the field’s controversial status within the social sciences. Policy research is often criticized from a number of different and to some extent conflicting directions. It is accused of setting the standards for programmatic success too high and of judging success with simplistic and poorly conceptualized indicators. It is often applied selectively to eliminate programs with weak constituencies while being ignored whenever it challenges dominant groups or classes. Its emphasis on aggregate impacts and costs has been shown to sometimes screen out the legitimate grievances of oppressed groups. And policy research’s focus on target-group impacts has been found to direct attention away from larger and perhaps more important impacts on other groups and on the social order in general. Through your exposure to these criticisms, you should develop a healthy understanding of the limits and weakness of policy research methods.

Third, the course will give you a working knowledge of most of the research techniques used in policy analysis. These include, for example, impact evaluations, cost-benefit analysis, systems modeling, comparative analysis, implementation studies, performance-based budgeting, and survey research. Each technique has its uses as well as its drawbacks. The key to good policy research is to know when an approach should be applied and what information it can produce as well as what it is likely to conceal. You should leave the course with an awareness of the many analytic techniques available to the policy analyst and the circumstances for which each is best suited.

Fourth, students will examine a wide range of actual policy-research studies and findings. Some of the largest and most expensive research in the social sciences has been conducted to determine the effects of existing policies. To some extent, there has been a failure within the traditional social sciences to take cognizance of this growing body of knowledge. By the same token, policy analysts themselves have not devoted much time to assembling the findings from their research into general theories relevant to the other disciplines. The course should give you a basis for drawing on research in a variety of policy areas to design new lines of inquiry and to inform social scientific theories.

Finally, the course should provide you with an appreciation for the important role policy analysts can play in the maintenance and expansion of popular control of government. Science is playing a larger and larger part in the decision-making of courts, legislatures, and executive agencies. On the one hand, a danger exists that political participation by citizens will be supplanted by technocratic elites. On the other hand, science also has the potential to help citizens see through the ideologies of entrenched interests and to be more open to alternative explanations of public problems. You should leave the course better equipped to make policy research a force for democracy rather than technocracy.

Organization of the Course

In effect, the course is divided into four parts. The first two and the last are covered very quickly. The bulk of the course is devoted to part three. (1) We begin with a quick emersion into the nature policy research. This will be accomplished by reading the required text by Richard Nathan. In Social Sciences in Government, he gives an excellent overview of the field, its history since the mid-1960s, and what he has learned personally through his experience as an academically based policy analyst. (2) After gaining a good idea of what the practice of policy analysis is like, and of the many barriers it has encountered, we turn to an exploration of the origins and philosophical foundations of the field. The most important readings on this topic are those by Harold Lasswell. We shall see that many of the problems encountered by policy analysis were anticipated by Lasswell, and we will consider the strategies he proposed for overcoming them. (3) Next we will examine a number of important examples of policy research. The examples were chosen so as to offer a wide policy areas and analytic techniques. (4) The course concludes with a short reexamination of the role of policy research in American democracy.

Course Requirements

In addition to assigned readings and class participation, the course requires students to write five essays and make brief (five minutes) presentations to the class summarizing their thesis. The essays should be about 5 pages long, double-spaced and with normal margins and font sizes. The essays should open with a thesis sentence, which states the position you will be taking. The first paragraph, which begins with your thesis sentence, should summarize your main points. The rest of the essay should follow from the first paragraph. The concluding paragraph should be draw conclusions and implications.

The essay topics are as follows:

Essay No. 1: Discuss the origins, nature, and political function of policy research. What is Lasswell's account of the history of the policy orientation? How does policy research today differ from Lasswell's vision for it? How does policy research differ from traditional research in the social sciences? What reasons are usually given for having a specialized methodology, as opposed to using standard social scientific methodologies, for studying the effects of public policy? Are these arguments valid? To what audience is policy research addressed? To what other audiences might it be addressed? How should we decide whom to address and how?

Essay No. 2. Discuss the conceptual, practical, and methodological difficulties associated with impact evaluations. How are these evaluations typically conceptualized and organized? To whom are they addressed? What types of impacts tend to be overlooked? What potential audiences of policy research are overlooked? What would American government and politics looked like if impact evaluations (in their usual form) were used routinely to drive programmatic decisions? How, if at all, could systemic impacts be measured? How could systemic assessments be institutionalized?

Essay No. 3. Explicate the political theory implicit in the ways politics and administration have been studied by policy analysts. Describe the subject matter of implementation studies, formative evaluations, organizational development, compliance audits, etc. How do these types of studies conceptualize politics in relation to administration? What other subject matters (outside of the administrative sphere) do they presuppose? Describe some alternative ways in which politics and administration might be studied. What is the political implication of studying administration and implementation as a sphere separate from public opinion, elections, and legislative politics?

Essay No. 4: Design research to guide electoral reform in response to the disputed 2000 presidential election. Let us say that we are to advise Congress and the President about what changes should be made to the federal, state, and local electoral system. Our recommendations are to include everything from possible Constitutional amendments to the choice of machines used to cast and tabulate votes. We have a commission to oversee our work but are expected to propose at the commission's first meeting a comprehensive research program to address all of the major issues entailed in the commission’s charge. Your assignment is to propose a combination of research projects capable of meeting the commission's congressional mandate. Assume that you have a budget of $2 million to contract for research, and one year in which to reach your conclusions and formulated your recommendations.

Essay No. 5: Develop and defend your own view of the role policy research should play in local, state, and federal politics and government. Using examples from American politics, describe the nature of public problems. How do governments typically respond to problems? What role does policy research play in this response? What is the relationship between social science, policy research, government, and public problems? What should the relationship be? What institutional reforms, if any, would be necessary to realize your vision for policy research?

The final grade will be based upon the essays (15% each), class attendance (5%), and class participation and preparation (20%). With respect to the latter, students are expected to attend class, to arrive on time, and to have read and be able to discuss the assigned material. The “starting grade” for attendance is 100. Each unexcused absence lowers the final grade for attendance by 5 points. The starting point for class preparation and participation is 100. Each class attended without reasonable preparation lowers the final grade for participation by 5 points.

Extra Credit

Students have two opportunities to earn extra credit. They can gain five points to add to their lowest grade by bringing in a copy of a significant example of policy research on a major program or issue along with a 1-2 paragraphs description of the study’s origins and influence. A total of 10 extra credit points can be gained (5 for each study).

Accommodations for Students with Disabilities

If you need accommodation for a disability, please talk with the instructor at the end of the first class.

Course Schedule

January 10 First class

January 15 Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

January 24 Essay No. 1 due

February 14 Essay No. 2 due

March 12-16 Spring Break

March 21 Essay No. 3 due

April 11 Essay No. 4 due

April 20 Last day of classes

April 23-27 Final Exam week. Essay No. 5 due April 23

Course Outline and Readings

1/10 Introduction: Overview of the course and course requirements. Initial discussion of the relationship between knowledge and power. Brief review of the history of policy research.

Read in class: Brown v. Board of Education

1/17 The Context and Nature of Policy Research: Examples of types of policy research. deHaven-Smith’s generic model for designing policy research. Discussion of the current status of policy research. Issues within the field of policy research. Relevant developments in philosophy, philosophy of science, political philosophy, and sociology. Discussion of the following questions: What is policy research? How does it differ, if at all, from traditional research in the social sciences? What has been the experience with policy analysis, in terms of its influence in the policy process and its status as a profession? Is policy research an art or a science?

Read: Nathan, Social Sciences in Government, Chapters 1-2.

deHaven-Smith, Philosophical Critiques, Preface and Chapter 1 Philosophical Critiques.pdf

Suggested: Aaron, Politics and the Professors, first chapter.

Murray, Losing Ground, first chapter.

1/24 Origins of the Policy Research Enterprise. Explication of Lasswell’s political science in “The Policy Orientation.” Discussion of why the policy research enterprise originates during World War II and the early Cold War, and why it expands greatly during the Vietnam War and the War on Poverty. Analysis of the war-oriented language of policy research. Back to Lasswell’s effort to reorient policy research from war to democracy and social transformation.

Read: Nathan, Social Sciences in Government, rest of the book.

Lasswell, “The Policy Orientation”

Lasswell, “The Universal Peril”

Suggested: Gotz Aly, Final Solution: Nazi Population Policy and the Murder of European Jews

Essay No. 1 due

1/31 Experimental Impact Evaluations. Discussion of experimental and quasi-experimental research designs. Problems associated with these designs. Strategies to mitigate these problems. Discussion of when and how impact evaluations are used.

Read: Nathan, Chapter 3-5

Pechman and Timpane, Work Incentives and Income Guarantees

Klein et. al., “What Do Test Scores in Texas Tell Us,” http://www.rand.org./publications/IP/IP202/

2/7 Comparative Analysis: Description of comparative analysis. Discussion of the Coleman Report. Premises of regression analysis. Alternative interpretations of Coleman’s findings. Limitations of comparative analysis.

Read: The Coleman Report Coleman Report.pdf

Bronars and Lott, “Do Campaign Donations Alter How A Politician Votes?”

deHaven-Smith, “The Effects of Florida’s Limits on Campaign Contribution,” report for Florida Right to Life v. K. Harris Campaign Contributions.pdf

2/14 Trend Analysis: Review of history of social indicators. Examples of ongoing trend studies: US Census, Florida’s BEBR reports, Poverty Studies, Uniform Crime Report, Panel Study on Income Dynamics. Problems inherent in trend studies. Strategies for dealing with these problems.

Read: Reports from Panel Study of Income Dynamics Panel Study Web Page

deHaven-Smith, Philosophical Critiques, Chapter 2

Suggested: William Julius Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged, pp 48-63.

Murray, Losing Ground

Essay No. 2 due

2/21 Research Assaults on the Premises of Policy: From Moynihan to the Bell Curve.

Read: Moynihan’s study of the African American Family Moynihan Report.pdf

1964 Economic Report of the President, pp. 14-83 Economic Report of Pres..pdf

1982 Economic Report of the President Economic Report of Pres. 1982.pdf

Suggested: Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow

Herrnstein and Murray, The Bell Curve, pp. 168-190

2/28 Process Evaluations. Description and discussion of various forms of process evaluations: formative evaluations, implementation studies, organizational development, systems analysis, legislative compliance reviews, etc. The pluses and minuses of these studies. The ideological misuse of process evaluations.

Read: Nathan, Chapter 8-10, 12

ELMS III, Final Report ELMS III.pdf

deHaven-Smith, “Evidence on the Minimal Management Principle of Program Design”

Local Government Commission II, Final Report

Suggested: Wildavsky, Implementation

Vandenburgh, Feeding Frenzy: Organizational Deviance in the Texas Psychiatric Hospital Industry

Nathan, Doolittle, and Associates, Consequences of Cuts, pp. 9-21

3/7 Meta-Analysis. The problem of trying to draw conclusions from various projects on different programs. Overview of the findings and conclusions drawn from policy research on the Great Society. Subject matters overlooked by policy research: urban rights, the message in the policy, the politics of poverty, etc. The distorted emphasis on implementation. The role of evidence and theory in the shift from the Great Society to the Reagan Revolution.

Read: Berrueta-Clement, Changed Lives

Suggested: deHaven-Smith and Ripley, “The Political-Theoretical Foundations of Public Policy.”

3/14 Spring Break

3/21 Cost-Benefit Analysis. Continued discussion of impact evaluations, with an emphasis on how to value impacts. Explication of the(questionable) theory of justice underlying cost-benefit analysis. Summary of the unsolvable problem of differing cost-benefit ratios at different levels of investment. Summary of the problem of duration. The history of efforts to tie budgeting to program objectives and performance. Description of PPBS, MBO, and Performance-Based Budgeting. A recap of problems with cost-benefit analysis. The politics of budget-oriented policy analysis. Alternative budget-related approaches: economic impact studies, tax alternative studies, annexation studies.

Read. Fishkind, Presentation on Fiscal Impacts of Growth

Nicholas, Impact Fee Study Impact Fees.pdf

State Comprehensive Planning Commission, Final Report Tax and Budget Report.pdf

Tax and Budget Reform Commission, Final Report

deHaven-Smith and Hendry, Annexation Study

Ford Motor Company Cost-Benefit Analysis Pinto Madness.pdf

Cost-Benefit Study of Smoking

Essay No. 3 due

3/28 Blue Ribbon Commissions. Review of research on the impacts of the legalization of gambling in America. Review of National Gambling Impact Study Commission Final Report. Review of the National Public Sector Gambling Study Commission Final Report. Discussion of the politics of impact evaluations.

Read: NGISC Final Report

NPSGSC Final Report

NORC Final Report

NRC Final Report on Pathological Gambling

4/4 Systems Modeling. The uses of modeling in environmental research. Applications to social systems. Dynamic modeling. Examples of models.

Read: Evaluating Jail Crowding: A Systems Perspective (www.ojp.usdoj.gov/BJA)

Suggested: Foucault, The Eye of Power

LaFree, Losing Legitimacy

Meadows et al., The Limits to Growth

4/11 Public Participation Processes. Overview of public opnion theory and research in political science, with an emphasis on Converse and Zaller. Discussion of the implications of the political science findings for policy analysis and also performance-based budgeting. The long history of participatory policy-making in American government. Recent pressures for greater participation. The American Assembly process. Interests that arre disadvantaged by consensus-building approaches. What is and is not implemented? How to sustain momentum.

Read: Converse, “The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics”

deHaven-Smith, deHaven-Smith, Environmental Concern in Florida and the Nation, Chapters 1, 8 Environmental Concern.pdf

deHaven-Smith, “Collective Will-Formation: The Missing Dimension in Public Administration”

Future of Florida Assembly Statement

deHaven-Smith and Wodraska, “Consensus-Building in Ecosystem Planning.”

Suggested: Yankolovich. Coming to Public Judgment

Essay No. 4 due

4/18 The Role of Policy Research in American Politics. What role does policy research currently play in American politics? Who are the intended audiences? How could the influence of knowledge and reason be increased in policy making? Should we shift audiences? Should we change the way we speak.

Suggested: David Musto, The American Disease: Origins of Narcotic Control

Jurgen Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests

4/23 Essay No. 5 due